


Atmospheric Phenomena (The castles in the sky Remix)

by Owlship



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Established Relationship, F/M, George Miller's Timelines, Introspection, Mythic!Furiosa?, Mythic!Max, Remix, Wasteland Mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 08:11:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11824614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlship/pseuds/Owlship
Summary: "Furiosa?" Dag asks. When Furiosa glances over from the repair job she's working on Dag's on her stomach, feet waving in the air and her concentration seemingly on some sort of book on the ground in front of her face. "How old are you?"





	Atmospheric Phenomena (The castles in the sky Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FrostbitePanda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrostbitePanda/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Fata Morgana](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7352776) by [FrostbitePanda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrostbitePanda/pseuds/FrostbitePanda). 



> When I got my assignment I knew right away that I needed to remix this lovey fic, partly because I just love the idea of Mythic!Max far too much- so of course I couldn't resist the idea of exploring Furiosa's side of things.
> 
> A bit of dialogue has been taken directly from FrostbitePanda's original fic!

"Furiosa?" Dag asks. When Furiosa glances over from the repair job she's working on Dag's on her stomach, feet waving in the air and her concentration seemingly on some sort of book on the ground in front of her face. "How old are you?"

Ancient, Furiosa thinks to herself at the same time as she thinks, barely past five-thousand days. She doesn't bother to question Dag about why she wants to know. Things become strange inside that girl's head, the familiar taking on unexpected twists that would take someone more nimble than she to follow. Instead she silently does the math, finding that she has different reference points to use for her estimates than she did in the past. "Fourteen thousand days," she says. "Give or take."

Dag hums, and flips over a page in her book. "Do you know how old Max is?" she asks, something cheeky in her tone.

"Ask him yourself," Furiosa replies, a slight edge to her voice rising from nowhere. She would guess he's around the same age as her and leave it at that- what does it matter to her, the exact measure of days that he's lived?- if it wasn't for how tight-lipped he is about his past, how he can blend in with the memory-sharing of the Vuvalini as easily as knowing it all already, how he's never caught flat-footed with the strange new inventions the Wasteland throws at them either. He might be her age, or he might be a poorly-preserved specimen only half that, or he might be older than the fucking hills.

"Cheedo thinks he's an old man," Dag says. "White streaks in his hair and everything."

This comment is peculiar enough to catch her attention. Max is not an overly young man, not the way the remaining War Boys are young, but he's hardly turning silver-headed either. "He's not," she says.

"I dunno," Dag says, looking up from her book to send her a shrewd look. "He talks like he might be, sometimes."

Furiosa meets her gaze until the girl drops it away, and then looks at the series of screws she was supposed to be adjusting. Which one had she just left off last?

"Vyrie called him a 'growing boy' once," Dag offers up next.

She takes a moment to picture that and lets out a snorting breath. Max is many things, but still growing isn't one of them. Furiosa picks a screw at random and sets her screwdriver back to it, feeling for the give in the metal it's holding together.

"How old do _you_ think he is?" she asks, knowing that asking is only going to give Dag encouragement, but figuring that the questions have to be coming from somewhere.

"Oh," Dag says breezily, "Younger than the moon, older than the clouds."

Furiosa isn't surprised to have gotten such an esoteric answer, especially not if Dag is still working on her theories in her own time. She lets out a little noise that might pass as agreement and waits a beat to see if the conversation will continue before devoting her attention to her task again.

 

* * *

 

"Heard he used to be a bronze, before the world went all googly. One of you know, the good guys."

"Those cops were rotted all the way through and you know it."

"Sure, at the _end_. I heard he was there from the start, all shiny and new."

 

* * *

 

She's still not used to him coming back. There have been more than a dozen days now when Furiosa's heard about a particular car approaching, or looked out to see a plume of dust that might be anyone's and yet _known_ , and she thinks it won't matter how often it happens because all she can count on are the days when the Wasteland might as well be empty for his absence.

No one's hurt this time, nothing needing repairs or advance warning to be ready. Max is just back because his feet tugged him here, and she knows that asking beyond that is even more useless than questioning Dag. That asking how long he plans to stay will only make him think about leaving, skittering off into the horizon for who knows how long.

She greets him in what has become their usual way, grounding herself against the grit and tang of exhaust he brings with him, letting him ground himself in return. He doesn't quite sigh audibly but his body unfolds a little, his edges blurring.

Their sliver of peace is interrupted by Cheedo's excited calling of his name, and then Furiosa has to break away to let him be shared with the others of the Citadel. She has nowhere pressing to be and so she doesn't leave him, but instead finds herself a few steps away, watching.

Maybe it's because she still has Dag's conversation in mind, but she thinks the light skimming over his hair does make it look somewhat pale, at certain angles. Not exactly white but she could see how someone might get the impression, depending on where they're looking. Furiosa runs her hand over her own hair, feeling the sudden need to frown as the thought occurs that maybe it's not such an illusion after all. Maybe he _is_ older than she takes for granted.

Max notices her attention on him and sends her a questioning look, forehead scrunching as his eyebrows lift. The glimmer of lighting has left his hair, leaving it familiar all-over brown, and she turns her rueful smile inwards as she shakes her head minutely.

 

* * *

 

"It's a gramophone," Max says, poking at something they'd hauled out of the room that used to be a Vault. No one has noticed Furiosa where she's lingering by the doorway, the inconsequential task at hand not worth breaking the tableau before her.

"But what does it _do_?" Capable asks.

He doesn't answer but his hands do something with the device, a crank turning over and over, and suddenly scratchy music fills the room. It's coming from the trumpet-flare of the gramophone and it's utterly alien, as if there's a band hidden just out of sight.

"Oh, it's a song!" Cheedo says, plainly delighted.

"Mhm. It's on that disk, and it plays as it spins," Max says, hands gesturing in the air to demonstrate. A singer's voice starts up, crooning words Furiosa can't quite make out from where she's standing.

"It's a nice song," Capable says. She sways in time with the music a little, smile growing on her face.

"You should dance with us, Max!" Cheedo says, holding out her arms but not quite reaching out to grab him.

"Yeah, dance!" Capable says, and twirls with a flourish, her red hair glowing in the light as it fans out around her.

Max has a smile on his lips, eyes soft and indulgent, but he shakes his head. "I don't dance," he says. Not anymore, Furiosa hears in his voice, and feels something in her chest ache. On the disk the singer's voice rises and falls plaintively, incongruous for the pleasant scene, and she slips back out of the room before she can hear any more.

 

* * *

 

"So then, get this- this guy, he _flies through the air_! Just like one of them old-time-y heroes."

"He didn't do no flying, dummy. It was his _car_ that flew."

"Nu-uh. The wind picked him right up and he threw snakes at his enemies."

"Snakes, huh? Where'd you hear something so addle-brained as that? It was buckshot he was tossing out."

"It's the truth! You want to tell your own story you wait your turn. Now, this bloke he's flying, and old Lord Humungous is rampaging all over the place, and bam! Gets a snake to the face. That's why he needed to wear that ugly helmet."

 

* * *

 

When he leaves again she knows it's the last she'll see of him, the same as she's known all the other times that he won't be back. She knows better than to depend on someone like him to stay, half wind and all dust.

It's harder now that she's _with_ him when he's here. Now that she knows what his skin tastes like, how he can make her body sing, what his face looks like when he falls apart in her bed.

Furiosa rolls herself over in that very same bed and stares hard at the shadows that make up her room, all the familiar shapes of the place she's carved out for herself. Nothing spooked him this time, no one had any errands for him to run. Max had just muttered something about heading out and then he'd gone, with a tank of fresh water and the Citadel rising in his rearview.

That's how she knows he won't be back this time. Whatever his job was he's done it, he's made his amends, and now that he's checked up on them all like the guardian angels she dimly remembers hearing about he can ride off into the Wasteland and disappear, finally.

She wonders how long he's been waiting to find enough peace to let himself rest.

She wonders, completely and irrevocably selfishly in the dark safety of her room, why he can't find that peace here. Why the Fata Morgana always have to return to being dead, or as good as, and why he has to be the sort of immeasurable ass to turn out to be a regretful spirit when all she wants is him as a man.

She turns herself fitfully over the other way on her mattress, giving herself only the dark blank stone of her wall to look at. He might not be done making amends, some part of her whispers- but as soon as the thought comes, she squashes it. Man or spirit, Max has already done more than enough good to earn his redemption, and he doesn't say much about it but when she teases bits of stories out of him she knows that he's doing just as much good when he's away from them, too, for all that he seems to hate it.

A real Fata Morgana would never have come back that first time. Vyrie had told her so herself when she was still chafing at the demands of her healing body, and cautious of appearing too interested when his name was brought up. She hadn't been used to hearing it yet, the short noise of it, solid on her lips and steady in her ears.

 _"That Max is a restless spirit if I ever saw one," Vyrie had said when the question was tentatively raised about when-_ if _\- he might be back, eyes not lifting from her fingers as they expertly knit bits of scrap yarn together. "Got more than his own skeleton in the closet, I'd wager."_

_"Wait, spirit like ghost?" Capable had asked._

_"What's the use of a metaphorical spirit?" Dag said with a roll of her eyes._

_"He's not a_ ghost _," Toast had said, "He touched stuff. We all watched him give blood to Furiosa."_

_"A spirit is not the same thing as a ghost," Vyrie said, and had turned her knitting over to a new row. "He's a Fata Morgana, a man of fate, and now that he's finished his business here he'll move on until he's at peace."_

_Furiosa had felt eyes on her then, though she was feigning a deep preoccupation with constructing her new prosthetic hand. The girls might have been asleep in the back of the Rig when she confessed to Max that she was seeking her redemption, but they sure heard when he used those same words against her on the Salt later._

_She was reminded then of the tales Katie would tell her around a midnight campfire, of vengeful spirits full of despair, too far gone for the penance they seek. Of helpful visions building a store of good deeds one by one. There's no question in her mind that Max was flesh-and-blood the same as herself; she could feel his blood pumping inside her very veins at that moment, the air he restored to her lungs. And yet yes, there had seemed something otherworldly about him. Something sad and deeply wounded, something more gentle than should coexist alongside his violence, something too good to be true._

_"At peace?" Capable had asked._

_Vyrie had nodded, finally bringing her eyes away from evaluating the knitting she's done. "They say death is very peaceful, if you go to it at the right time."_

_And then things had devolved, away from the Fata Morgana and Max to fall headlong into the realities of trying to convert a mountainful of suicidal War Boys with the gospel word of life over death when none of them quite have the conviction for it that Angharad had._

Furiosa scowls at the wall and draws her knees up close to her chest. Maybe she should bring out the spare blanket she keeps packed away. She never needs it on nights when Max is with her, his bulk filling up all the cold spaces of her bed easily. She doesn't always sleep soundly with him in her bed, nor does he, but the good nights outweigh the bad until she's starting to think that she craves his very presence.

She wonders if he's cold wherever he is now, be it Wasteland or somewhere further afield.

With a frustrated groan she rolls herself over and straight off the side of the mattress, feet landing bare on the chilly stone. Sleep is clearly not going to come to her tonight and in its place she might as well do something more productive than wallowing in her own thoughts.

 

* * *

 

"No, I'm telling yah it honest! This bloke, he went into Thunderdome and he came back out- but _he_ didn't kill nobody."

"I heard about that; they said he got Auntie herself on his side."

"Sure did, till he took out Underworld."

"Now _that_ never happened."

"Did too! Took a choo-choo straight outta the side of it."

 

* * *

 

Every time when Max comes back, she has a moment where the air feels as if it's been punched out of her chest. When the lines of his car resolve themselves on the horizon, or she spots his head in the crowd near the base, or once when there was just his voice rumbling out a greeting from behind her, there's always a moment when she can't breathe for the surprise of it.

He won't be back, Furiosa tells herself every time he leaves. He's made his amends, or he'll run into trouble, or he just won't _want_ to. And so far she's been proven wrong every time.

Today he's back, and when the day's work has been finished she finds herself leading him to the space the girls are most likely to be found gathered in, and finding Forthright and Vyrie there as well. Max ducks his head when Forthright professes her thanks over the parts he'd found for her rifle, tricky things to repair in their own forge, and in the warm light of the room his face looks young and smooth, boyish almost. He says little, the way he always says little, but she watches the way he tries and fails to have the praise just roll off his shoulders.

"We were just saying," Vyrie says, cutting over the fussing-over going on, "How nice electric lights used to be!"

Max hums, and his eyes flick to the torches lining the walls. The garages have a few electric lights, and they'd found some stashed in Joe's old rooms, but the bulbs are too precious to waste on anything that isn't a critical task. Furiosa grew up with firelight, and clearly remembers the first time she'd seen a lamp straight out of the stories glowing away without any flame.

"Candle-light's... it's flattering," he says after a moment, and Forthright breaks out into a loud guffaw.

"Is it now, boy-o?" she says, turning her face this way and that like she wants him to take a better look and judge for himself.

Max's lips twitch into a smile, eyes crinkling with dark little shadows at the corners. He takes his eyes away from Forthright to look at her instead, and Furiosa feels her breath catch a little with the heaviness of his gaze, the way the lamp's light reflects off his eyes. "Mhm," he hums, looking directly at her and looking not an ounce boyish now, "Beautiful."

 

* * *

 

Sometimes Max doesn't come back but instead directs people to the Citadel in his stead. Furiosa has gotten good at knowing which wastelanders have come by chance or their own initiative, and which ones were directed their way.

"Never caught his name, but he said this place trades fair for fair work?"

The stories always vary, details disagreeing with each other- even within the same group, oftentimes. If they mention his leather jacket or his black car she'll know for sure, but even when details are vague or contradictory she gets so she can tell when they mean Max, and when they mean some other person who just happened to know the way to the Citadel. The people he sends usually have some hidden skill among them- a talent for doctoring, a knowledge of how to make paper, a voice that can charm birds- but just as often they're only strays looking for a soft place to land.

"He came out of the night like some sort of bogeyman, but handed over this medicine my boy needed, said there's more for trading over here."

Rarely one will have a message for her, or an item to be passed along. Furiosa is never quite sure what to do in those cases, how to reconcile his leaving with the way he hasn't truly left, not all the way.

"Got this for you, some mad bloke was sure you'd want it. Though what a 'perator like you wants with a dried-up old sack of roots is beyond me, but it ain't doing me no good sitting around."

 

* * *

 

"Do you have a minute?" Capable asks. There's something held behind her back and Furiosa assumes it's something broken, some minor task not worth taking down to the workshops but that she can't do herself.

"Of course," she says. Her time is often in short supply but she makes special allowances for the girl who were Wives, not begrudging them much of anything she can spare.

"I'd hoped to have this done before Max left again," Capable says, and from behind her back produces a sheet of paper, thick and creamy, some of the best to have come out of their experimental mill. It's not the paper itself but what's on it that's important; Capable has drawn in charcoals and inks a scene of them- of the girls, and the Vuvalini, and a few War Boys and Pups; in the corner, leaning in towards each other like they're sharing a private conversation, are herself and Max. It's masterfully done, the picture alive with movement and vitality, expressions and gestures captured well enough to speak to long hours of study.

Except that Max looks absolutely nothing like himself. There's something about the figure Capable has drawn that makes his identity unmistakably him, and yet... the man pinned down on paper here is not her Max.

"It's wonderful," Furiosa says truthfully. She can draw a schematic or engine diagram well enough if given the time, but anything that isn't hard logical lines is beyond her.

Capable smiles, relieved and a little shy. "I've been working on it for _weeks_. Zara's been helping me."

"Have you shown the others?" Furiosa says, studying the way little details are picked out in shadows and delicate lines. She believes that the drawing must have taken so long.

"Just Cheedo," Capable says. "But there's something else..." She puts the drawing down on a table at her side, and rummages through a stack of lesser-quality scrap paper for a moment before pulling one out. One side is filled in with printed words from some old wordburger, on the other a drawing. "I thought you might want this?"

It's a drawing of a man's head, obviously a study from life. Furiosa has absolutely no idea who it's meant to be for a moment; the features are hardly generic, but it takes a second for them to coalesce into- "It's Max," she says, surprised for some reason.

"This one came out the best," Capable says with a nod.

Furiosa takes the paper from her and finds she doesn't know what to say. The longer she looks the more certain she is that this is Max and no other, and she's captivated by the shading across his face, the way his eyes stare out at her from the page, expression faintly amused like he's aware that he's being captured in charcoal. "It's..." She finds that she doesn't have words. "Thank you."

Capable's smile widens. "I can draw one of you for him to have," she says.

The thought scrapes against her unpleasantly for reasons that have nothing to do with the strangeness of being sat down for a portrait. Would he be more likely to come back if he had a reminder, or would it push him away? Furiosa never quite knows where his head is at when he leaves and is almost superstitiously afraid of upsetting the balance that does exist, the tenuous hope in her chest that he'll come back at all instead of turning into dust on the wind when he's out of her sight.

"Maybe," she allows.

 

* * *

 

"So she grabs the spear with her hand- _yes_ the metal one, what else?- and yanks it straight outta the Buzzard's car!"

There's nothing truly remarkable about the way she fended off that Buzzard on the patrol run, no matter that she had been cut off from the rest of the pack with an ailing car. Which is why Furiosa can't understand why the story is being passed around the way that it is. Gnash being proud of his first successful run on the Fury Road she could understand, but he doesn't brag about his own lancing when she overhears him tell it, and it isn't just him repeating the tale.

"Aye, then she grabbed an 'apple right off my waist, 'cause I was still all locked up from that hit, see, and lobs it straight through into their cockpit. Bam! Perfect hit."

There's no point in trying to stop the story being told, and why should she care? The story of the revolution is widely-spread, variations popping up among even the most distant of travelers, and she knows that her reputation precedes her everywhere she goes. The things she did under Joe's rule were many and varied.

It's just odd that such a simple little incursion should be picked up like she was facing down the leader of the Buzzards, not just a runty scav.

"Mind you, the car was still all bunged, belching smoke n' all, not that you'd have known it was running foul with her at the wheel."

Furiosa thinks some days that she can feel her legend growing like a living thing, a cloak that covers as much of her as it reveals. She won't be much surprised if some day she hears a story that sounds like one of Max's, all strange distorted details yet anchored with a thread of reality underneath.

 

* * *

 

She watches Max sleep next to her on the mattress for a while, envious that tonight he's found unconsciousness while it eludes her. Furiosa extracts herself from the bed carefully but he doesn't stir, and she moves to sit at her work table.

The moonlight is silvery-blue through her window and far too dim to do anything in, but she doesn't dare light a lantern with him looking so peaceful. His breathing is steady, a quiet drone in the otherwise silent confines of her room, a noise that some nights she finds soothing and others, irritating. Tonight there's nothing more to it than a background thread, a reminder that he's here, that he's alive with her.

He turns on his side and nuzzles his head against the ratty pillow, and she feels an affection well up inside of her that is so great she thinks she will burst from it. How can a man like this be anything but a man, just as flesh-and-blood as herself? Here she sees no great deeds, no wild fireside stories, just a man sleeping like any other.

Yet even as she thinks it, there's a sliver of moonlight illuminating the side of his head, casting deep sharp lines across the planes of his face. She can see how he might be mistaken for another person in this light, how the threads of his hair seem silver one moment and black the next, how the architecture of his face seems so malleable as he frowns, hand reaching out across the mattress.

She wonders what she would see if she were to lay the drawing Capable did next to him, compare her pencil lines to reality. She has no doubts about the girl's talent, wouldn't question the likeness of any other subject, but she wonders what it would reveal about Max. Does Capable see him as Furiosa does? Or is he different for her here, in the quiet of their room, than he would be any other place.

She remembers hearing about lost technology that used to capture images exactly as they were, without being interpreted through an artist's hands, and she wonders what that would reveal. A different person entirely, maybe.

She wonders what he sees when he looks into the mirror, if he recognized himself immediately in Capable's drawing, in the stories that get passed around around campfires. She knows it's him they talk about, though the details change as often as the wind, knows it like she knows it's him when dust appears on the horizon, when a band of wanderers arrives looking for shelter.

Furiosa doesn't know when he's opened his eyes but she meets his gaze, dark and deep in the night.

"Mm?" he hums, hand still reaching out for where she had been on the mattress. His eyes fold shut as he yawns widely and she smiles, the expression swallowed by shadows.

"Sleep," she whispers.

He blinks and sighs, and settles back down into the bed again. Maybe she'll give sleep another shot herself, once she adjusts the curtain so the light doesn't spill through as much.

 

* * *

 

"Of course we all know she took off old Joe's head and freed the water, but did you hear about the time she went toe-to-toe with the Bombardier?"

"Oh come on, that never happened."

"Sure did! My mate was there, he saw it all clear-like. Said she didn't even need weapons, just went at him with that shine hand of hers."

"Yeah, right. Not even she could take the likes of him down unarmed. Heh, 'armed'."

"Well it happened, cause he's gone, ain't he? He and all his bombers gone, poof."

 

* * *

 

"Max..." The question bubbles up from where it's lain fermenting in the dark recesses of her mind, finally wanting to be let free. He turns to her and the words slip out with relief, like a weight being lifted from her shoulders. "How old are you?"

He looks as surprised as she expected, and there's a pause before he answers. "Mm... don't really know."

The answer is about what she expected, too. What use does a wastelander have for exact measurements of time? Even the sun barely seems to vary in its orbit these days. Still, that he doesn't have even an estimate to offer up...

"Vyrie remembers the old world," Furiosa says after a moment. Why she's asking this now is a question she can't answer, but the sky above them is wide and dark, like any secrets shared will be held in confidence. It's just the two of them out here under a blanket of burning stars. "She told me she's 67."

Max fidgets, uncomfortable, but doesn't shut down entirely.

"She was nineteen when the first bombs dropped," she continues, because there's too much momentum for her to stop. There's always too much momentum, her life a speeding rig hurtling down a road so long she can't see the end of it. "Took a few years for it to all go to shit." She pauses, one last chance to divert her path, taking in his expression. "How old were you?"

There's silence for a long stretch of time, any hope she might have held that he'd say he's younger than all that, that he hadn't been born yet, evaporating into the dry still air. He might have learned all his strange ancient information second-hand, passed down from someone his elder- but his silence says otherwise, the way his expression goes wry and sad before he finally speaks. "Twenty-two."

She can't look at him for a moment, chest constricting as she tallies up the years, the days. He looks unchanged all the same, looks no older than she does, and it brings a rueful smile to her face. "It's true," she says, thinking of Vyrie, of Dag, of all the little clues strung out over the time since she's known him. His expression clearly shows that he doesn't know what she's talking about and so she explains, sealing his fate and, in some way she can't articulate, hers as well. "You're a spirit."

 

* * *

 

If she's honest, she hadn't really believed that one man could have so many encounters in his life, even a life that may not be a life at all. But out in the Wasteland Max seems to draw attention to himself like a magnet, for good and for ill, no matter how perfectly he blends in with the crowd.

Perhaps it is because he blends in so well that he draws attention; perhaps his unassuming attitude is precisely what guides the desperate to him like moths to a flame. Only instead of burning them up he helps, leading them to better places with the sort of gentleness that still takes her by surprise to see from hands she's watched wash away their share of blood and death.

Furiosa watches him when they stop in at a little ramshackle cluster of trader caravans in search of fresh guzz for their tank, as has become her habit. He slips in among the crowd in a way she doesn't, in a way she _can't_ unless she takes care to cover her arm and her head and the brand that sits at the base of her neck, which she never does. Even blending in perfectly with the other wastelanders she can see how the crowd reacts to him, a flock of birds all moving in tiny increments, aligned to his presence.

She's used to it by now, how the people they encounter recognize her and let their eyes slide right over him, but still act as though held fast by something unseen.

"They've got 9/16 bolts," Max says to her now, vigilant to the dangers that a gathering of people presents but not feeling the silent interest that swirls around him wherever he goes. Perhaps he's simply become used to it after so much time.

She does her own evaluation of the crowd, watching the furtive way one woman keeps glancing their way, her nails dark with what's probably dried blood. There's a task for him to do here, Furiosa can feel it brewing like a storm on the horizon. The idea of what he may or may not be has been one she's settling into now that she's on the road with him more often than not. She understands him better when they're on the road; the Citadel sometimes feels like it's changing too fast for her to keep up with, these days.

"You get those," she says, letting herself reach out to touch his arm where the leather of his jacket cuts away, reminding herself that whatever else he might be, he's flesh-and-blood to her. "I'll see about the fuel."

He hums, and twists his hand just enough to brush his fingers against hers as she brings hers back to her side, already turning away to see about the trading. The woman in the crowd takes a cautious step forward, eyes darting everywhere like a hunted animal.

"Please," the woman says behind Furiosa, her voice tired and wavering, "Please, I need someone to help."

 

* * *

 

"You know who they are, right? God-killers, the both of them. Why do you think there's no Triumvirate anymore? They chewed em up between them and spat 'em back out for the Wretched to eat."

"That was them?"

"Sure as shooting. So step careful, yeah? Unless you want to be set on fire for looking at 'em crosswise."

 

* * *

 

Furiosa sits still as Forthright brushes the fringe of hair that's been growing over her forehead away, the knuckles of her hand swollen with arthritis and age. She'll need to cut her hair soon, she can feel it tickling the tops of her ears.

"You look so much like your mother," Forthright says, wistful.

Furiosa feels the same tangle in her gut she always feels, rage and sorrow and dull resignation at the old loss, pride at being measured up to a woman as strong as her mother had been. Now there's a new shard of thought and she chases it down, a spot of cold realization blooming in her belly. She's older than her mother ever was. Older by several hundreds of days, though she doesn't know the exact tally of her mother's life to give a true total.

"It's like looking right at JoBassa again, isn't it?" Forthright asks, turning to Vyrie and her ever-present knitting.

Vyrie looks up and nods, humming. "Spitting image, that girl."

Furiosa has only a child's hazy memories of her mother to compare her face to, but she wonders how alike they can really look, when she's worn more lines into her skin than her mother got the chance to. For a moment she is five thousand days young again and still growing into her lanky limbs, the Green Place soft and fragrant all around her as she's told she'll be just like her mother when she's grown.

"You should tell me about her," she says, although she has heard all their stories at least once already.

It's the right thing to say and Forthright smiles, and pats the back of her hand with her own. "Where to begin," she says.

Furiosa settles in against the cushions and listens, and when she feels hair tumbling down her back the way it hasn't in thousands upon thousands of days, she only smiles softly at the last of the Vuvalini and brushes it away from her face. There is something of the Green Place in what the Citadel has become, but though the child is a long-gone impossibility she waits a few minutes more before shaking off the feeling of a skin that isn't hers anymore.

 

* * *

 

"They say he was married."

"They say she was a Wife."

"You don't think...?"

"I don't think nothing, 'cept it sure seems like they're bullets in a mag now, is all I'm saying."

 

* * *

 

"Furiosa," Dag says, a complicated tangle of thread woven through and around her fingers that her attention is fixed on manipulating. Her hair is harder to call blonde rather than true white these days, her face no longer that of the sharp young girl she was on the Road. "How old are you?"

Furiosa remembers being asked this before, many hundred of days before. Her instinctual answer still hasn't changed- far past her days, and yet barely begun. She thinks of Max, all of twenty-two years when the bombs fell and maybe still twenty-two now if she asks him again, his face unchanging over the days except for all the people it changes for. She plucks one of the threads from Dag's fingers and the pattern collapses, reforming a moment later into something new with a twitch of her hands.

"Older than the grass," she replies, "Younger than the stars. Give or take."

 


End file.
